1. Field of the Invention
This invention is in the field of radio and television broadcasting and advertising, and more particularly in the use of games and contests within the radio or television broadcasts to encourage radio listeners and television viewers to be more attentive to the broadcasts and more attentive to the commercials.
2. Prior Art
The prior art discloses a great variety of methods for trying to enhance the effectiveness of advertising as used in television, radio and on the Internet. The types of radio broadcasts for which this present invention is particularly relevant are the popular music programs which present programs of continuous music with advertisements interspersed between songs or between sets of songs.
It is recognized that listeners are usually less interested in the advertisements than in the music and the programs, and that listeners often take steps to avoid hearing the advertisements, such as disregarding the advertisements, leaving the vicinity of the radio, “surfing” which is rapid skipping from one program to another, or simply abandoning any program lacking compelling interest.
To counteract this disinterest of listeners advertisers have developed contests and games to encourage listening to programs and to advertisements by including in the programs clues or triggering events, which when heard by listeners may lead them to take certain action for which they will receive rewards or become eligible for possible rewards. Typically, the clues or triggering events are words statements or sounds that are broadcast between songs of a set of songs or possibly broadcast while a particular song is playing. Contest rules may widely vary as regards the nature of the clues, the nature of the responsive actions required of the participants, and the nature of the reward, prize or other result obtained by winning participants. In one example, a contest may reward the caller who correctly identifies the name of a song or performer of a song being played. Other examples include a reward to the first person to call in, or to the first ten callers, or to only the 30th caller, or to the first or to all callers within a specified time period who state a correct answer or other required response. In another contest the reward may be merely winning eligibility to participate in a secondary or further phase of the contest.
Regardless of the specific rules, protocols and rewards, all of these prior art contests insert the clues or triggering events between or among or during the songs being played, because of the basic assumption that it is the songs that draw listeners to hear the broadcast in the first place. Sometimes, the identification of the song or of the performer or of some fact related to a song is itself the clue or triggering event.
Examples of prior art patents which have addressed the general issue of enhancing the effectiveness of advertising in radio, television and/or Internet broadcasting are described below.
U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2002/0049967 A1 to Haseltine et al. concerns enhancing advertising in TV and in radio and on the Internet, namely, to provide an incentive for listeners to view the relevant broadcast. This is achieved by embedding electronic tokens into the broadcast of the programs and the commercials. The consumer has a token capture device (TCD), and the electronic tokens are radiated from the broadcast and captured by the TCD, which registers the fact that the programs and/or commercials were in fact received by the listener's receiving apparatus, such as his TV or radio. The TCD recognizes the electronic tokens and may display them or utilize other means for communicating this information to advertisers or broadcasters so that the listeners will receive their incentive rewards. While this invention induces listeners to hear commercials, it requires additional broadcast and receiving capability and still has commercials which can be ignored since they include no special triggering event appeal.
U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2002/0004742 A1 to Willcocks et al. discloses a method to enhance advertising as applied to the Internet and also via radio, TV and newspapers. In the broadcast or the other presentation media, an offer is made to the recipient, listener or observer that such person may obtain a reward if he or she acts promptly. The offer includes the condition that the value of the offer will decrease with time, and thus obviously induces the recipient to respond promptly. Alternatively, the condition could be that the response must be at a specific time.
U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2001/0034654 A1 to Vigil et al. discloses a method of interactive advertising where the viewer is offered the opportunity to win a prize in exchange for viewing an advertisement. In this invention the viewer must respond quickly, which he is supposed to do on his computer. The time period for reply may be only after a second advertisement or a second portion of an advertisement is seen, thus providing the incentive to view the entire advertisement. This invention has more elaborate aspects so that when the viewer responds with his computer via the Internet, he becomes identified in the database, which then may direct further, more personally tailored advertisements and/or rewards to him. While this provides an incentive to a viewer to watch a particular advertisement, it does not address the issue of the present invention, namely, of creating an incentive to watch all the advertisements, many of which the viewer may prefer to ignore.
U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2002/0120504 A1 to Gould et al. discloses a method including trivia contests to improve the effectiveness of advertising in broadcasts, which include TV and could include radio. The broadcast includes questions relating to advertising and other questions relating to the content of the programming. Listeners who respond are given rewards as the incentive for them to listen to the entire broadcast. This system provides benefits to the advertisers and broadcasters in that it creates a large and inexpensive research panel of television viewers who provide useful information about their reaction to the broadcast. Obviously, this system provides rewards to the listeners if they follow the rules. This invention does not include a triggering event between commercials.
U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2002/0087400 A2 to Khoo et al. discloses a method for providing a reward for viewing motion pictures and audio content from a broadcast. Here, the viewer has a television set or other broadcast receiving device which includes a component for direct interactive communication between the viewer and the broadcast source. The patent is thus directed primarily to computers with Internet connection. The viewer who communicates back to the broadcast source provides his personal identification, either automatically or by answering various questions. He then becomes part of a database which operates with a reward engine to assign and deliver rewards to the viewer who has responded. The respondent is given a reward for having viewed the broadcast; however, there is no disclosure in this patent of a broadcast of non-advertising product, such as music programs with interspersed advertisements and reward-triggering events between the advertisements, as in the present invention.
U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2002/0178060 A1 to Sheehan discloses a system for providing and redeeming electronic paperless coupons as an incentive in advertising as seen in TV, Internet and other broadcasts. For example, electronic coupons may be embedded in a video or audio program received by the consumer, or the coupon can be transmitted by a separate signal. Electronic coupons are rewarded to viewers who listen to or watch broadcasted programs. These coupons are provided in a variety of ways which can include being sent automatically to the viewer or to a retail establishment or to a smart card.
U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2002/0053076 A2 to Landesmann concerns marketing primarily on the Internet, and more particularly to the field of buyer-driven targeting of purchasing entities to thus enhance the effectiveness of advertising. In a first embodiment of this invention, the purchaser of goods over the Internet provides proof of the purchase via required steps and then receives a reward which was his or her incentive to make the purchase. By this system, advertisers may reward buyers for reading and responding to advertisements, and offer exclusive promotions, and offer promotions tailored to specific purchases or specific customers, etc.; however, this concerns neither radio broadcast of programs of songs with contest clues interspersed among songs.